Archive for 2008
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
Broken ER-6 Earbuds
Etyomic Research makes these headphones that are PERFECT for motorcycling in a multude of ways. Firstly, it actually fits in your helmet. For me with my giant ears, I have problems fitting normal ear buds (like Apple’s or whomever’s) into my ears comfortably while wearing my helmet. The second is that when you wear normal ear buds in your helmet you have to listen to them very loudly as the sound coming out of them needs to be even louder than your alrady noisy helmet.
The ER-6 solves both of these problems and produces some amazing sound from such a tinny ear bud. Firstly, the driver/earbud is tiny and will fit in almost any helmet. Then… Instead of a hard plastic speaker that you shove into your ear, the ER-6 has various attachments for various ear shapes. They’re soft gelly molded in shapes that resemble ear plugs, instead of speakers.
Since they go so far into your ear and in fact are shaped like ear plugs, they isolate you from outside noise. If you just put them in without music, they’re nearly as effective as good ear plugs. Once you turn the music on.. get ready! They sound infinitely larger than the tiny little ear buds that they are in reality. Suprisingly deep bass, great highs, it is amazing! Since they are so isolating, you can turn the volume of your mp3 player way down. Not only is this better for your ears, but it also uses much less battery.
After saying all these great things, my ER-6s broke. One of the channels was nearly silent. Yeah, I was not too happy about it. Atleast they broke at a time when I was in very curvy roads (Guatemala Highlands) instead of straight boring roads (Mexican Coast). I went earbud free for all of Guatemala. While driving through the “Desert” south of Coban, I tried my backup ear buds and they were terrible. I had to crank the volume way up to hear anything. I ended up stopping and not using them.
After being robbed around Atilan (can I make a single entry without mentioning it??), I had a package coming from the US with a new camera and ATM card, so I decided to have a replacement set of ER-6s sent from Amazon.
I got them in today and was idly reading the directions (wow!). They came with spare “filters”. Curiously I read on… apparently if you have reduced volume in one of the channels, you just replace the filter and BAM.. good as new. SO after replacing the filter, BAM.. Good as new =] . Whats funny is that I put both buds into my ears and realized that my OTHER earbud had reduced volume, so I changed that filter. BAM.. just like new ear buds.
So the good news is that I have two basically new sets of ER-6s, bad news: I paid a crapload of money from Amazon and importing/shipping to get new ear buds and all I needed were new filters. I like to have backups of critical gear.
I *HAD* a backup of my ipod, an Ipod shuffle. However it fell out of the bike when I hit a speedbump back in Belize and unknowingly had my topbox open. Oops.
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Monday, September 15th, 2008
El Salvador Border Crossing info
I’ve read about the misery of Central American borders for non-CA-4 citizens and thought it was just people being on the internet and feeling like they have to complain about stuff.
The short summary of my border crossing experience on CA-2 from Guatemala to El Salvador:
7 HOURS.
S E V E N H O U R S.
True: Part of it is my own fault because I had overstayed my bike’s import because of the robbery and replacement passport timing. But, the two other bikers I am traveling with took about 5 hours. Thats about 4.5 hours faster than my US-MX, MX-Belize, and Belize-Guatemala borders.
I know part of it is because of the language barrier, but the main reason is the complexity and all the different windows you need to visit across 4 buildings. Oh yeah, don’t forget your copies of EVERYTHING. LOTS too. I take 2 copies of everything and ran out. Here is what I used (corrected for my personal problem, which I’ll talk about later).
Documents:
Passport
Vehicle Title
Driver’s License
Copies:
2 Copies of your passport (photo page)
2 copies of your title
2 copies of your Driver’s License
1 copy of your Guatemala SAT stamp (should be next to your migration stamp) inside your passport
1 copy of your “completed” Guatemala SAT vehicle import worksheet
Here’s what you can expect:
* Enter border zone on CA-2
* Have passport and SAT vehicle import worksheet checked. Get a stamp on it
* Cross through Guatemala side past all sorts of border craziness including but not limited to
* Border helper monkeys fighting to “help” you and show you the way
* People selling fruit covered in flies
* Stange homeless looking person who drops a sock (a sock?) and when guard tells him to pick it up, he gives the f-off face and walks on (No eyesight needed, I could have smelled the whole thing… EVEN OVER MY OWN BIKER STINK!)
* Bicycles, lots of Bicycles (do bicycles need an import sticker?)
* Cows feeding in the border zone. ?????
* Goats feeding in the border zone. ??????????
* Lots of money changers
* TONS of trucks. Skip past them on your speedy bike
* Come upon a bridge where you are stopped by a guard who notes down something from you SAT bike paper. (Adds another stamp? checks passport?)
* Cross the bringe to El Salvador
* Migration official checks passport stamp. Guard checks SAT paper again (maybe another stamp? I have tons of stamps on that thing),
* Park in front of the building that says Migration
* Walk into Migration office. They’ll check your personal visa. El Salvador uses the same stamp as Guatemala. So if you have time, you don’t get another stamp for you passport. Sorry.
Now the fun begins. This is what we should have done, but we did lots of unnecessary steps. I’m not going to bore you with them.
* Go to the other building (not the migration one) and go to window 4 or 5. There will be a guy with a Guatemala SAT shirt.
* Close out your Guatemala SAT worksheet. I think you need a passport copy, title copy, and DL copy
* Walk back to the first building and find the copy place
* Get a copy of your closed SAT paperwork and a copy of your Guatemala migration passport/SAT stamp at a copy window. Should be $.10 or $.15 a copy.
* Next to the copy place is El Salvador Aduana, go there
* Start the paperwork for El Salvador. He’ll ask for: Passport, Title, passport copy, title copy, DL copy?, Passport/SAT stamp copy, completed SAT paperwork copy, and a sample of blood (J/K).
* Show these to the official and if you’re nice and he’s not too busy, he’ll fill out the form for you.
* You and the official then walk to bike to check the VIN
OK, now the REAL fun begins
* Walk to the other building
* Go into the door that isn’t the jail, mock a few prisioners, hope you don’t join them
* Start at window 3 and work your way through the pipeline, windows 3, 2, and 1.
* There is a huge line, Theo told me you can just cut the line in front of the truckers. I tried and a riot almost broke out. More about that later
* So, TRY to cut, if not… you better do what I did =]
* Upon completion, you’ll have a print out with a fancy sticker on it. DONE!
* Mount up bike, realize how it is much cooler in the mountians, and head towards the exit
* Get charged a $5 / vehicle gringo tax. Yes, I’m serious. They said it is only for non-CA-4 citizens. They atleast provided us with a factura. We tried to fight it
* Have your passport AND new salvadorian papers checked
* DONE!!!!!!!!!
So here’s what happened to me as I had a different situation:
I got through the to the guy who checked my passport on the Salvadorian side of the bridge. He paged through my passport and started getting twitchy. He then escorted me to the Migration office where he took me to the back and started asking me how I had traveled overland from the US and only had a Guatemala stamp.
I gave him my standard robbery “Tres personas con armas me roberon……Atilan…” speech. Satisfied, he let me go with the remaining time on my passport.
Then I went to the Salvador Aduana guy and was sent to the SAT guy in building two. I thought I was going to make it as he was telling me what I needed (copias, etc), then he noticed the date. Expired Sept 8. He then basically told me there was absolutely nothing he could do and that I had to return to the Guatemala SAT office on the other side of the river and get them to close the paperwork out.
I hopped back on the bike and went to the SAT office. This is where my fun began. Waiting. Waiting. W a i t i n g . Annoying helpers tried to “help” me by trying to get his friend that was working trucks to help me. After waiting for him for a while I just started asking all SAT looking employees. “Tres personas con armas…” I eventually came upon a guy named Sabil or something that sounded like that. He was sorta helpful after making me wait 3 or 4 seperat times. 1-2 hours elapse to get this answer “You need to get a letter of explination typed and printed”. Sabil then gets some girl in an orange shit to do it for me. She RUNS off and I start waiting for my letter. I wait for about 45 minutes (Sabil says, *hand gesture of a small amount” momento!). I get frustrated and start hunting for orange shirt girl. I circle the building and find her rocking out to some Mana.
I then talk to her and realize she hasn’t done a thing. She then tells me to have a seat and wait for grey shirt guy.
20 minutes elapse
Grey shirt guy sits down at the computer and whips me out a letter of explination. It was great, this guy actually knew how to type!
10 minutes elapse
I get a letter written, 2 copies, FREE!!!!
Next, I work my way back to the window around truckers and helpers who cut in line.
It is now 1ish and Sabil is at lunch, so I wait for him for “10 minutes”
30 minutes elapse
Sabil is back, says I’m good to go but he needs to wait for the boss. “20 minutes”
2 and a half H O U R S elapse with me poking through the window every 20 minutes asking if el jefe is back from lunch that he started an hour before I got there.
At this point, I’m incredibly hot, hungry, and frustrated.
Finally, bossman, aka the guy who must have had seafood that he took a boat to the ocean and caught himself finally showed up.
10 minutes later. DONE! I’m legally closed out of Guatemala. No penelties, no bribes, no problems. Just 4 hours of my life.
Impressibely, both Bryn and Theo are still waiting for me.
Then I start trying to get my salvador paperwork done. It is around 4pm. Dark happpens at 7. I’m excited because I’m in without HUGE fines but discouraged because there is NO way that we’ll be done by dark.
I do the building shuffle back and forth, get the right copies, etc etc… I then show all the right papers to the Salvadorian customs guy. At this point, I’m using my DaveSpan to the fullest of its ability. Tons of awkward spanish as a second language wit and jokes I try to befriend the Salvadorian guy. Mostly because he was a nice guy, but secondarily because customs people can make your life easy… or make you wait. Time is not what I have at this point.
My salvadorian paperwork is inked out (needs to be typed into the computer, then fancy sticker made), I start the 3 2 1 windows game.
Theo told me to cut infront of the truckers and I try to do so.
Try to cut.
Actually cut.
Davespan…
Solo tengo una moto….
Peligrosa at night..
Begging…..
A near riot occurs as all the truckers start yelling at me to go to the end of the bench (line). Recluctantly, I comply. What kind of self-ricious gringo am I?
I’m sitting in this line of stinky truckers (but alas, I have a massive reak to myself too, so HA!) realizing how screwed we are. There is NO way that I’ll be able to sit through this line, which is probably 2 hours long, and make it out of the border while it is still light.
My new friend, Salvadorian Customs Man, shows up and grabs me out of line.
We go to this little booth that has a computer, an operator… AND the magic fancy label printer. I’m gushing with excitment and DaveSpan.
7 minutes later, DONE! I have my paperwork all stamped and ready to go. Unbelievable. I profusely thanked the operator guy and ran back to Salvadorian customs to thank SCM. I have no idea what I told him, but he was smiling, and I was yelling crazy happy things at him “Tu eres el HOMBRE!! GRACIAS!!!”
It all worked out. I love Guatemala, just not Guatemala time. I’m on the Pacific coast in El Salvador and just had a fantastic meal of a pan fried fish.
Life is pretty good. Pretty, pretty good.
4 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by daveg
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
New Riding Buddies
After riding solo for 2 months I have now joined the ranks of a motorcycle gang.
And by gang, I mean other long distance motorcycle travels.
Thanks to Horizons Unlimited, I met Bryn, from Nelson, New Zealand. He was in Antigua, Guatemala at the same time as I was and we were both traveling solo.
What is also interesting is that while waiting in Antigua to meet Bryn, I met Theo, from Frankfurt, Germany.
So we’re now a rough and tough gang of Gringos (non-latins) with giant BMW motorcycles. By rough and tough I really mean smelly but amiable bikers.
Bryn is on a multiple month motorcycle trip that started when he bought his bike in Los Angeles. He is riding a mid-80s BMW touring bike (Bryn, which year/RT is it again? K100rt??). Bryn is a dedicated moto traveler and has toured several continents over the years. Interestingly, he’s already ridden from the US to Panama but did it almost 15 years ago when he was in his early 20s. Apparently the roads are much better now 
.
Theo is in month 16 of his continuous around the world trip on his 2002 BMW F650 Dakar (same bike as Heather’s!!). He is touring the world http://www.world-tourer.de with the aim of “travel and do good”. You can read more about him on his blog if you understand Germany. Even if you can’t, check out some of the pictures! Here is an article about his trip in English: http://www.world-tourer.de/press/2
Anyway, they’re both good guys (SO FAR). It is nice to have the company over the miles and new ideas for things to do. Of course it is nice to have the added perception of security too. Not that I would mention a past event in this blog post.
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Monday, September 8th, 2008
I HAVE A PASSPORT!!!!
Quick blog update. I am able to prove my Americanism again. I HAVE A PASSPORT! Not only that, but I’m also legally stamped into Guatemala. My bike.. on the other hand… It expires today and I’m supposed to make it to the El Salvador border. Eep.
I’ve had a few great experiences during my wait for my replacement passport that I’m going to post pictures (not from my camear) later this week.
Updates to come! Oh yeah, I’m in Guatemala City. I wish I had my camera to take a photo of all the babies at the embassy.
5 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by daveg
Friday, August 29th, 2008
My exact location of the robbery
This is more/less the exact location
Message Details
Esn : 0-7381807
Type : Track
Latitude : 14.621
Longitude: -91.2599
Time: Sat 23 Aug 2008 12:33:54 PM CST
The google map for that location is:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=14.621,-91.2599&ie=UTF8&ll=14.624365,-91.263471&spn=0.008679,0.021973&t=k&z=16
7 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by daveg
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008
Officially waiting for passport and replacement cards in Antigua
I first tried to get my new passport yesterday at the US Embassy, however there was a plane crash where 8 Americans died so they were closed to all non-emergencies.
After being rejected by the Embassy, I decided to have an American day. I figured after a month and a half I deserve a little US “culture” aka “American Corporate Multinationalism”.
I had breakfast at McDonald’s and dinner at Applebees. The McDonalds in Zona 10 of Guatemala city is extremely nice. The menu is quite simaliar as the United States, but the facilities were arms and legs better. They even had an option of renting a more formal dining room for coporate events.
Applebees was a surreal experience. The menu was identical in the US, even the advertising slogans were in English but the food descriptions were in Spanish. I had the 8 oz house steak with sides of Mac-and-Cheese and Onion rings. They even had free refills of coke! It was expensive, but worth it mostly because I met two Guatemalecos who I ended up hanging out with most of the night.
Whats funny is that in the US, I’d never go to either restaurant by choice :).
Today I woke up early and went to the Embassy. Word of advice to anyone who needs something done there: Get there first thing! I’m so glad I did. The whole process only took 3 hours but I could see it taking all day if I was even 30 minutes later. I met two girls from the United States who I told them I might mention them in the blog. Ra(e)? (ray?) (rachael?) and Alice(Alicia?) (Sr. Gonzales?), HELLO FROM MY BLOG. Now you two must leave a comment! They had their bags stolen from them at Lake Atilan but fortunately didn’t have a direct confrontation with the thieves. Unfortunately, they lost alot more in material value. Anyway, it was nice to talk to some friendly folks.
I’m now back at the Universal Language School in Antigua. While my passport processes, I’m going to hang out here and take two hours of Spanish a day for a week. I need to make the best out of this waiting for papers game.
Update: My credit cards are at Julio’s business in Guatemala City!!!!!!!!!!
I love Chase and WaMu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not only did they get it to me in 2 business days, but it was at no cost to me!!! Thanks Julio for helping me out again!!!! (I’m “!!!!”).
6 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by daveg
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
Tough day riding around Lake Atilan
Today was a beautiful day and I decided to take the long way to San Pedro. I drove from Panajachel south around the lake. The views were so fantastic that I had a hard time trying to find the best place to take a picture to capture the view.
I was doing my usual thing of stopping every once and a while and getting directions. The second to last time I stopped for directions I was in Santiago Atilan. I asked the guy if I was on the correct road to San Pedro and he said yes. As I was about to take off, he told me to “Cuidado”. Usually people tell me to have good luck or good travels, etc, but this time it was cuidado. I asked him, Porque? He responded with a single cognate:Banditos.
I just said gracias, and continued on, but was trying to pay more attention. I guess I’m used to people saying that, but never from immediate vicinity locals.
After another 4 or 5 miles, the pavement stopped. There were some people hanging out at the last tienda and I confirmed that I was heading the right way and one guy said cuidado. Again, I asked “porque”, and he said because the roads were not paved.
I drove offroad for another 2 or 3 miles, perfectly sunny day, and the dirt road was in OK shape (even took a picture).
There was a long straightaway and from both sides of the road two men dressed in camo with a balaclava covering thier face jumped out of the jungle and pointed their guns at me.
They ran towards me screaming to stop with their guns still aligned.
The men arrived at the bike (now 3 men, one came from behind) and started screaming at me asking for my dinero. I complied as they had one gun touching my forehead through my visor and another gun pointed at my gut.
I was in a state of complete panic and but managed to put the bike in neutral. They kept screaming for my dinero, I handed them my fake wallet and coin purse.
They then started to grab all over my body and ripped my sunglasses off and went straight for my traditional money belt.
The guy on the right kept prodding at it and was waving the gun at me shouting and motioning for me to give them the contents.
My money belt was then ripped from my body.
Then they started ripping through my tank panniers taking nothing as they weren’t interested in my rain gear.
Agian, they started grabbing around, this time in my tankbag and found my camera. They then asked for my phone. I have no phone, and I kept saying that repeatidly.
Satisfied with my response, they ran back into the jungle.
I continued straight for 100 yards… but realized it was another 15KM to San Pedro on an unknown dirt road.
I decided to just turn around and fly through the area figuring they were happy with their grab so I could go to the nearest town.
Standing on pegs, I hauled it through the dirt and paved back into town. I am writing this while I am now on hold canceling my credit cards.
Next, I get to have the fun of filling out a police report, getting replacement cards, and new passport.
Their take was the above cards & passport, 40$ USD, 60 quetzales (<$10), and my favorite saftey/sunglasses. I’m glad they couldn’t figure out how to get into my mapbag ontop of my tank bag to get my GPS tracker. They were swatting at it likes cats at a laser pointer, but didn’t take the time to open it. Though it was in tracking mode, so it would have been funny to see if any tracks would show up.
Strangly, they threw my fake wallet back in my jacket. They took the Q60 that I had in the money part, but I had stashed another Q100 and US$5 in the card pockets.
Oh well. Other than the massive inconvenience of time of replacing my cards and passport, the thing that sucks the most is that I had 3 days of pictures on my camera that I didn’t download. So Kim and Tyler, if you want to make the website, you have to email me pics!! It is such a shame because I had a great video riding ziplines through the jungle and looking at the lake!
I should have paid attention to the locals and spread my stuff out even more. argh…… I don’t believe that I had both of my ATM cards in the same place. Atleast I have enough money stashed in other places to be fine for a very long while.
I still love Guatemala and of course plan to continue my trip south.
Unharmed,
dave
32 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by daveg
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
Antigua Guatemala
So I was originally going to stay in Antigua just to climb Pacaya, but I ended up finding a really nice guest house, similar to a bed and breakfast or hostel at a spanish school. The people I met here are great AND they had WiFi. So I may as well as stay a week. That is the nice thing about a long trip, you have the time to be flexible. I’m way behind my original timeline. My original timeline was kinda a joke anyway. After being on the road for a month and change now, I know that timelines are always a joke. You never know what you’re going to see and who you’re going to meet, so why even bother planning. The only solid date I have is: Christmas at the tip of Tierra del Fuego.
Anyway, I was quite surprised when I was checking out these accommodations to see two other HUGE bikes (for the area) with Washington plates. Basically, for the first hour of staying in Antigua, I was trying to figure out who had the bikes. I soon met Nathan and Lindsie. They rode here all the way from Washington on vintage Japanese motorcycles. Well, 1980s Japanese bikes atleast. HEY NATE, IF YOU READ THIS, COMMENT ON YOUR BIKE TYPES. I FORGOT! So yeah, I’ll replace that with their bike types.
They got to have twice the adventure that I’ve had. While we both had the excitement of riding this far south, they had the added complexity of getting a vehicle that is 20 years old this far. Their brief story is that they are riding to Panama or however far south they can make it in 6-8 months. Right now they’re hanging out in Antigua working at the only Irish pub in Guatemala as bartenders. Check out their blog here.
Oh yeah, I bought a Machete!!!!!!!!!! I’m now ready for jungle camping. Well, maybe not, but atleast I can look cooler on the bike.
This is Riccardo, from Italy. He’s webprogramming his way through the Americas. He’s peligroso tambien.
Here is Elvira, my spanish teacher. She always addresses me as usted. Guatemalans are so formal!
Last Sunday I went for a bike ride with Julio, esposa, y amigo. I’m out of time, so I’ll try to update this text later. But here are the pictures from it. We road almost to the El Salvadorian border on CA-1 and then to the coast at Monterico.
We had to take a small wooden ferry powered by a 15HP outboard motor.
Later that night at the Guest House, we had a big dinner with great food and premium boxed wine.
It is so cold here!!
3 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by daveg
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
Lava!!!!
I’m staying in Antigua now at a language school. My original intent was not to study Spanish here, but just to visit the volcanoes and stay in Antigua just long enough for that. More about that my next post.
The first day I went to a tour agency and booked a trip to Pacaya. The cost was something like $15 USD for a tourist bus up to the mountain. Then we needed to pay another $6 to enter the park and have a guide escort us up. Not that you needed a guide, but most tourists are happier with a guide.
The group I went up with was a mix of UK’ers/Irishers/Spanish and about 3 other Americans– all fairly young. This was a good group to go with the mountain with because we were all in OK shape, so there wasn’t much waiting. It was nice to be the slow one as opposed to my other guided tour where I was always waiting around.
They picked me up from my guest house at 2pm and proceeded to fill the crappy bus with gringos. The bus was clean but pretty old. Loaded with people, it took about an hour and a half to two hours to get up the volcano. I could have done it on the bike in about 30 minutes. It. was. a. slow. ride. The views were beautiful though.
We hiked for an hour and broke through the forest and saw this:
!!!!!!
So I was pretty excited at this point to be on another volcano. My last volcano encounter was in Hawaii on the big island. To get to lava there, it was an hour horizon hike across a lava field. This time, it was an hour up a horse shit filled track. Almost immediately up arriving at the lava fields, you were on top of this:
LAVA!!!!!!!!!!!
The red glowing stuff is molten rock. I’m pretty sure I sacrificed some eyebrows with the previous shot.
Goal Accomplished: Stand within 1 meter of Lava and get a picture.
Volcan shot 1:
Volcan shot 2:
Shot one or two is going to go on my wall. I spent so long trying to take that picture with my crappy point and shoot balancing on a barbed wire fence that I lost my tour group and had to run down the mountain to catch up.
It was a great hike up and I’d like to do it again, but at night this time so I can get the full effect of a glowing lava field.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lava!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by daveg
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
Landslide Video
I wanted to put this up before my Guate post, but I had some encoding issues: